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FCC to Court: We Gauged Deregulation Impact on Diversity

The Federal Communications Commission told the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that it did consider the impact of its broadcast local ownership deregulation on minority and female ownership and that that consideration and its adoption of a definition of eligible entity meets that court's mandate. "[T]he Commission carefully analyzed whether each of its rule changes would have a “material impact on minority and female ownership," said the FCC's legal team. The FCC told the court it could consider the arguments for or against the rule change in the regular order of challenges to those underlying rules, but that it should not take the extreme state of staying the rules and granting the writ of mandamus. The FCC also said the court did not mandate further data collection related to gauging diversity impact. Prometheus et al. identified the lack of data as one reason the FCC had failed to discharge the court's mandate. It also addressed the thresholds for a stay, saying petitioners had not shown they lacked an adequate alternative remedy, or that they would be irreparably harmed absent a stay, or that they are likely to win their underlying challenge on the merits, or that the balance of harms favors the stay.